[01:00:00:09 - 01:00:15:17] Speaker 1 The Pentagon ordered every military chaplain to take the rank off his chest. To understand why, you have to understand what this institution spent 30 years doing to its shepherds of faith. [01:00:15:17 - 01:00:33:00] Speaker 1 Doug, every soldier, sailor, airman, marine, has an experience with a chaplain. I think the reflection that I'll start this conversation with is that the chaplain became irrelevant when I was in the last 10 years or so. [01:00:34:09 - 01:01:19:20] Speaker 1 When in reality, some of the most heroic, impressive stories of valor and service from wars like World War II and Vietnam were chaplains. But what I think transpired is that this desire to have therapeutic moral deism replaced a desire to have faith as a foundation of military service. And we did that under the guise of tolerance and religious freedom when in reality, it crippled any ability for service members of faith to rely on their faith when it came to putting on the uniform. That's right. [01:01:20:25 - 01:01:22:27] Speaker 2 Yeah, I think about my experience as well. [01:01:24:28 - 01:01:34:17] Speaker 2 It's a super valuable role and as long as they're committed to what they believe in. And I'll just come on and say it's still a Christian country. [01:01:36:24 - 01:01:44:02] Speaker 2 We're gonna get into this about how the Pentagon has changed things and how the look is different but in terms of the number of religions. But [01:01:45:10 - 01:01:54:20] Speaker 2 that's right. If you don't have people in those roles that are prepared to say, this is what I believe and this is where my faith comes from, let's talk about yours, [01:01:55:21 - 01:01:57:24] Speaker 2 what's the point? It's just like a therapist, right? [01:01:59:04 - 01:02:05:16] Speaker 2 And especially given the nature of the work and we've all seen those pictures in wartime where [01:02:06:23 - 01:02:20:24] Speaker 2 they're getting ready to go down range and there's the chaplain standing up and everybody's, they're on their knees or they're praying and they're getting ready to go, that's real. And you have to have a real structure around that that [01:02:21:27 - 01:02:42:02] Speaker 2 enables everybody to say, I have somebody I can go talk to about this, not some watered down, who is this guy over here? What does he believe? What are we supposed to be doing? So we went too far down that path. We gotta come back. We gotta dial this back. And that's what Hexeth has been doing and I appreciate it. It's a difficult thing. It's hard to talk about. [01:02:42:02 - 01:03:02:02] Speaker 1 Well, and I give him a ton of credit. I mean, honestly, I think these are the kinds of changes only Pete Hexeth could have made. Like someone with his vision, his courage to address the issues that intimately affect every soldier and family. They may not kind of be the bureaucratic, no bleach of [01:03:03:11 - 01:03:24:28] Speaker 1 DC politics, but they are core to the experience of a soldier. And so in late 2025, he said that we're gonna make the chaplain corps great again. And I thought it was awesome, frankly. I mean, the first reform he talked about was shrinking the number of available faith codes from over 200 [01:03:26:14 - 01:03:32:17] Speaker 1 faith codes to I think 30 or 31. Faith code is essentially what was on your dog tags, [01:03:33:18 - 01:03:48:09] Speaker 1 which is important because you and I are people who think that there's a life beyond this one. And when we die, it's important to prepare the body and to get ready for that life. Well, you gotta get ready during this life. But in any case, [01:03:49:25 - 01:04:28:20] Speaker 1 I took a lot of pride in marking my dog tags as Catholic in my case. But what had happened really while I was in and after is that every conceivable affiliation what became a possibility. And I think what happened is that when the list of faiths that the military should cater to and represent becomes essentially infinite, the effort to respect faith is meaningless. And we revert to this agnosticism where faith is just a private matter that soldiers have to keep to themselves. [01:04:28:20 - 01:04:46:11] Speaker 2 And just even that thought of that list, I saw the list, the 210 or whatever it was. And I was floored by it because I was like, what are you talking about? And it's like what you said, you just take whatever was on there and put it on the list, whatever anybody had checked off. But I think that [01:04:47:21 - 01:05:09:22] Speaker 2 everybody, the Christian faith in particular, as I'm just saying this from my own standpoint, I know what's true. I know Jesus was who he says he was. I know the God of the Bible made the universe. I know all that. And I would be, if I was a chaplain and I was required then to, well, I'm gonna [01:05:10:25 - 01:05:19:16] Speaker 2 have this big book that covers 210 things. And okay, what's your deal? And I'm flipping to that and then I'm saying stuff I don't believe. [01:05:21:06 - 01:05:40:11] Speaker 2 How's that supposed to work? Is that gonna help that guy? It's not at all. The answer, okay, so the question is, well, what do you do for that guy? Well, it's still a Christian country. And so most of those chaplains are gonna be Christians. That's all it comes down to. My battalion chaplain, when I first got in the army, he was a great Christian man, talked to him a lot about different things. [01:05:41:12 - 01:06:04:07] Speaker 2 And you can't, the alternative is, okay, so I guess we're gonna have 209 chaplains per battalion just in case. So you have, again, Pete Hexeth was man enough to say, yeah, this is not working. We gotta go back the other way. And I'm thankful for it. And I do like this side of it too. I just, it draws us closer to saying what I think we need to say out loud a lot more. We're still a Christian country. [01:06:04:07 - 01:06:30:13] Speaker 1 Yeah, we are. And 82% of service members identified with only six of these codes. So we were really just catering to the endless categorization of minority faiths. Not to demean them, not to say that those faiths shouldn't be protected, but when we are going to support the faith, the religious framework, you can't do it for everyone. I remember going through ranger school. [01:06:31:20 - 01:06:57:27] Speaker 1 Oftentimes there were Protestant church services, but not Catholic mass. And you couldn't cover every kind of potential liturgical practice for every denomination of Christian, but you drove on, right? You were there for mission. You understood that it might not be ideal, but you had confidence that when able, the army was gonna take care of you and give you the time you needed to practice your faith. [01:06:57:27 - 01:07:06:01] Speaker 2 That's right. And there's the two distinct things here in my mind, the practicing like what you're talking about. Oh, there's a service that I'm gonna attend. [01:07:07:02 - 01:07:44:04] Speaker 2 Or you need somebody. Like you as an individual, you need to talk to somebody, right? So if you're Jewish and you need to talk to somebody and you go to your Christian chaplain, it's okay that he's like, okay, I'll get you somebody. And then a couple hours later, he's back with the guy over in the other battalion or some part of the division, he grabbed them and there we are. So that's kind of how I think about it more in terms of just you have services that can be available, but when somebody really needs true spiritual guidance, because they're having a dark, dark time, we got to figure that out for that individual. And it goes back to what you said, [01:07:45:06 - 01:07:56:03] Speaker 2 we're talking about the numbers and you look at the reality of the numbers, let's just manage the reality, not try to manage by exception all over the place or nothing will happen. [01:07:56:03 - 01:08:54:17] Speaker 1 Well, and I'll note that the Christian affiliation is even more stark when it comes to combat arms units. That's right. Yeah, the other reform that Secretary Hegseth announced is chaplains will still have a rank as officers, but they won't wear it anymore, which is, I think, a unique, a very stark change, a necessary one, because it's one thing to go to confession, seek counsel, seek guidance from a Colonel, if you're a second Lieutenant or a Sergeant, but it's another thing if it's your chaplain, if it's chaplain Phillips, chaplain Jones. And I think, you know, Secretary Hegseth, because he has experience as a soldier, he knew that how that relationship would get a little bit more complicated if you're trying to manage a rank structure while you're also managing a structure of faith, counsel, and guidance. [01:08:54:17 - 01:09:41:08] Speaker 2 That's right, no, it's a smart move, because you just have to think through that junior soldier, and then he's thinking to himself, "Oh, I just, I don't, that's a captain or a major over there. "I can't go do this," you know? And so you want to break that barrier down, and I think that that's another smart move. I hadn't really put that together even just until they brought this up, I'm like, "Yeah, that makes a lot of sense," because it was easier for me because I was an officer and the chaplain was an officer. Right, right. But I'm thinking about everybody else, and I'm like, "Okay, I don't see, you know, "Private Smith when he's having a difficult time at home, "and he's out in the field and he wants to talk to somebody. "I don't see him really opening up to another captain." Because he made me think of himself, "Well, this guy's gonna talk to the other captains," you know, they need to view it as like, "No, this is a private conversation with somebody "who's gonna help me." [01:09:41:08 - 01:09:49:23] Speaker 2 gonna be evaluated as officers, and so that's not changing, you know, it's like they still have to maintain those standards. It's just, it's a unique branch. [01:09:49:23 - 01:09:51:29] Speaker 2 Always has been, so might as well call it it is. [01:09:51:29 - 01:10:11:26] Speaker 1 And again, critics, I think, will once again try and make this about an arbitrary culture issue that, you know, the Trump administration is fighting based on their personal religious preference. But, you know, again, I couldn't disagree more because the issues at hand were, [01:10:12:26 - 01:10:20:20] Speaker 1 it's been real, it's gotten really bad. Veteran suicide since the war on terror, divorce, broken families. [01:10:20:20 - 01:11:02:05] Speaker 2 the older I've become and the more I put my faith in Jesus, I know that he solves all kinds of problems, no matter what they are. And I have seen firsthand guys that are on the edge gonna kill themselves. I mean, I've been in some strange situations and then I've seen that guy give his life to Jesus and he completely changed. And so, you know, the further we get away from, oh, we don't talk about that, you know, just let's just pretend like everything's fine and go get your therapist and, you know, that we are not, God did not wire us that way. He wired us to look for him. And so we have to facilitate that. Otherwise people are just gonna wander around and hurt themselves on certain levels. [01:11:02:05 - 01:11:26:12] Speaker 1 The founders of America, I think in many ways founded America based on a pursuit of Christ. Yes. And it is not anti-Muslim, it's not anti-Semitic, it's not anti-secular to say that we are a Christian country because I think we can still acknowledge the Christian fabric of our nation. That's right. Support, [01:11:27:15 - 01:11:44:17] Speaker 1 you know, make sure that fabric flourishes without being discriminatory or harming others. But to simply acknowledge that there's a reality to how we got here. That's right. And that we need to keep this fabric together if we wanna continue the American project through the 21st century. [01:11:44:17 - 01:12:08:19] Speaker 2 Well, culturally, if you're gonna call yourself a Christian and you're gonna follow Jesus, he's telling you do not discriminate, do not harm your neighbor. Right. All those things that follow naturally and it makes a more pleasant culture, the more that we have. Yes. The more that we really have, not people just saying they are, there's a whole separate thing. But if you go down that path, [01:12:09:26 - 01:12:17:02] Speaker 2 the culture looks better. And then I think also, you know, the reality is if we're gonna go down range and fight wars, [01:12:18:04 - 01:12:59:01] Speaker 2 you know, it's better to have a strong faith than not. Mm-hmm. That's the bottom line. I mean, if you're an atheist, there's no atheists in foxholes, right? That's right. And so, you know, let's just acknowledge that and just go to that place and say, well, what do you believe? You know, let's talk about it. And these reforms are gonna get us closer to that than further away and especially the spouses. And I know there's a lot going on right now with this acknowledgement that faith is so important for the military community. And, you know, there's nonprofits that are springing up to bring Christian faith to, you know, Bible studies and all kinds of stuff to bring it back to a better place because we've drifted, we've drifted. And the [01:13:00:00 - 01:13:02:28] Speaker 2 results are in and it's not going well. So we might as well go back the other way. [01:13:02:28 - 01:13:45:15] Speaker 1 Right. And again, this is not some fringe. That's right. Extremist cultural issue. This is about the wellbeing of families. And it comes back to military readiness because I think if soldiers have to choose between a life where they feel their faith, the faith of their family can flourish in the life of service, many are gonna choose that life of faith. The military has to be a place where the mission is symbiotic and where you feel like you don't have to compromise your faith by wearing the uniform. That's right. I think that, and that's what Secretary Hexeth I think has in mind. And it's why, you know, I think that the Restoration America Foundation will have a lot more to say about it. [01:13:45:15 - 01:13:56:29] Speaker 2 That's right. That's right. Now I appreciate him doing this. I think the moment that I saw that it was, there was over 200 faiths and we had a narrow down to three, that of anything says that we had gotten to a bad place. Yes. So we bring it back. [01:13:56:29 - 01:14:19:13] Speaker 1 For years, the military became an institution that in trying to cater to everyone's faith, completely removed faith as an acceptable topic for the military. Secretary Hexeth introduced important reforms to resurrect [01:14:19:13 - 01:14:39:13]